Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 October 15

"Lisa the Vegetarian" is the fifth episode of the seventh season of the animated series The Simpsons, originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 15, 1995. In the episode, Lisa Simpson stops eating meat after a trip to a petting zoo. Initially ridiculed by her family and friends for her decision, she commits to vegetarianism after advice from Apu and from Paul and Linda McCartney. The McCartneys guest-starred as themselves, appearing on condition that Lisa would remain a vegetarian for the rest of the series. The episode contains references to Paul's musical career, and his song "Maybe I'm Amazed" plays over the closing credits. Directed by Mark Kirkland, "Lisa the Vegetarian" is the first full episode of The Simpsons written by David X. Cohen. It was watched by 14.6 million viewers and received positive reviews from television critics. For its themes on animal issues, it won an Environmental Media Award and a Genesis Award. (Full article...)

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Babsan in 2010

• ... that Swedish fashion designer Lars-Åke Wilhelmsson is known for his dragshow character Babsan (pictured)?
• ... that Azel Backus was the first president of Hamilton College, New York?
• ... that Vereinigte Glanzstoff-Fabriken became one of the leading European producers of rayon?
• ... that for conventional computers, Landauer's principle gives a nonzero lower bound on energy per step, but the energy usage of reversible cellular automata can be arbitrarily close to zero?
• ... that the song "Everything" by M2M was aimed at Zac Hanson?
• ... that Joseph Dart and Robert Dunbar designed and built the first steam-powered grain elevator in the world?
• ... that Jupiter Heliopolitanus's oracle in Baalbek, Lebanon, answered the emperor Trajan's question by giving him a broken vine staff?
• ... that West Virginia's largest American sycamore, the Webster Sycamore, survived an arson attack and inspired a proposed name for the state's health insurance marketplace?

Alexander Lukashenko

• Anheuser-Busch InBev agrees to purchase SABMiller for £69 billion.
• Dell Inc. agrees to acquire EMC Corporation for US$67 billion in cash and stock.
• Alexander Lukashenko (pictured) is re-elected President of Belarus for a fifth term.
• Angus Deaton is awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
• At least 105 people are killed and more than 500 others injured in twin bombings at a peace rally in Ankara, Turkey.
• The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

• Ongoing events:
  • Russian military intervention in Syria
  • Southeast Asian haze
  • European migrant crisis
• Recent deaths:
  • Mathieu Kérékou
  • Richard F. Heck
  • Geoffrey Howe

October 15: Global Handwashing Day

Pierre Laval

• 1529 – The Siege of Vienna ended as the Austrians repelled the invading Turks, turning the tide against almost a century of unchecked conquest throughout eastern and central Europe by the Ottoman Empire.
• 1764 – English historian Edward Gibbon observed friars singing Vespers at Capitoline Hill in Rome, inspiring him to write The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
• 1945 – Pierre Laval (pictured), twice head of government of Vichy France, was executed for high treason.
• 1965 – Vietnam War protests: The Catholic Worker Movement staged an anti-war rally in Manhattan, including the burning of draft cards, the first such act to result in arrest under a new amendment to the Selective Service Act.
• 2005 – A march by members of the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group, in Toledo, Ohio, US, sparked a riot among protestors.

• More anniversaries:
  • October 14
  • October 15
  • October 16